


Vegas Lights

by nepetrel



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, M/M, finding peace without moving on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 01:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nepetrel/pseuds/nepetrel
Summary: “You've reached the voicemail of Jack Zimmermann. Please leave a message after the tone.”





	Vegas Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maeve_of_Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeve_of_Winter/gifts).



_“You've reached the voicemail of Jack Zimmermann. Please leave a message after the tone.”_

“Hey, Jack. It's Kent. Yeah. You knew that...listen, I hope you're doing okay. Or like, better. I don't know if they let you have a phone in the – in the hospital, but. Please call me back when you get this.

“The draft sucked without you,” he blurts you, and he knows that's the wrong thing to say.

He sends it anyway.

 

Vegas in August is so hot Kent feels like his sneakers are going to melt into the pavement. The sun is gunning for him personally, and every hotel he steps into has the AC blasting so hard he feels like he's going to freeze.

“You get used to it,” Soupy says when one of the other rookies complains. Kent doesn't complain. He keeps his teeth locked on that kind of thing, only opening his mouth to laugh good-naturedly when the guys who've made it chirp him, or to chirp the other rookies up for training camp. Gotta show you appreciate being there.

Jack had sometimes been awkward around new people, and Kent had always been the one to smooth that away with a joke or a smile. Jack's not here, but he finds himself doing it anyway, on autopilot.

The rookies go out together in one nervous pack after the first day. Vegas radiates heat even at night, and when they predictably hit the strip, the lights give him a headache. He thinks, absurdly, of lying in Jack's truck and looking at the stars. No way to see the stars here.

 

_“You've reached the voicemail of Jack Zimmermann. Please leave a message after the tone.”_

“Finding you that way was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Can't you just call me back?”

That one he deletes.

 

Training camp goes on. It becomes clear which guys aren't going to make it. It's basically all the guys in Kent's year and the one before it except for him. “You better hit all the clubs,” one guy, a blond offensive prospect whose name Kent's already forgotten, says over lunch. “When I get called up, you need to show me all the hot spots.”

Kent almost drops his sandwich. He can't believe this guy doesn't resent him. He thinks they were technically fighting for the same spot, though it wasn't much of a competition. “Yeah, okay,” he says finally.

Lunch is pretty decent. At least the food in Vegas is good.

 

_“You've reached the voicemail of Jack Zimmermann. Please leave a message after the tone.”_

“Jack, I don't know what I can tell you. You don't want to hear me talk about hockey, right? So I won't talk about hockey. But I want to hear how things are going for you. I miss you so much.”

 

Training camp ends. Almost all the would-be rookies Kent made sort-of-friends with have been sent back down, minus a few guys three or more years older than him, who are technically in the same boat as him but who might as well not be from the same planet. Their in-jokes have in-jokes, and Kent knows he's not going to find the rhythm to it anytime soon.

He tries to make friends with the older guys. Soupy shows him which bars won't card him before threatening to kick his ass if he ever makes a scene in public and offering to let Kent live with him. Kent figures he's just that kind of guy and takes him up on it. Scraps takes Kent to a fucking pinball hall of fame, because that's the kind of thing they have in Vegas, and then to the atomic testing museum, which is way cooler than Kent thought it would be. Kent buys a car and takes himself out to the desert at night, sitting in the driver's seat with a blanket over his shoulders and looking at the barely visible swirls in the red rocks in the dark. It's colder out here. Kent can see the stars.

 

_“You've reached the voicemail of Jack Zimmermann. Please leave a message after the tone.”_

“Hey, Jack. I hope you're doing better. I'm not going to keep calling you so much. I get it, you're going through stuff. I think I'm going through something too.

“I miss you all the time, but you know where to find me. Call me when you're ready.”


End file.
